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Civet of Hare

A stew of hare with bacon, stock, spices, blood, and port, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Civet of Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Divide uncooked hare into small pieces.

  2. If using cold roast hare, warm the meat in gravy for a few minutes.

  3. Fry the hare pieces and bacon in butter until lightly browned.

  4. Remove the hare pieces and bacon from the pan.

Make the civet

  1. Mix flour smoothly into the remaining fat in the pan.

  2. Gradually add stock and combine with hare bones, onions, mace, bay leaf, salt, cayenne, sugar, and mushrooms or mushroom powder/ketchup.

  3. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the gravy.

  5. Return the meat and bacon to the gravy.

  6. Add bruised liver, blood, and port.

  7. Simmer until the meat is cooked through.

Serve

  1. Add lemon juice if desired.

  2. Serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hare
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle simmering in the gravy.
Bacon
Its rendered fat adds savoury richness and flavour to the browned base.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth gravy with body.
Blood
Thickens the sauce and deepens its colour and rich, earthy flavour.
Port
Adds sweetness and fruity depth that balances the gamey meat.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic depth to the gravy as they soften.

The step that matters

Adding the blood. Blood thickens when heated and can curdle or scramble if it boils. Stir it in off the heat or over very low heat, and keep the gravy below a simmer so it stays smooth.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, onion, mace, pepper, sugar, mushroom):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Mangofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion, mace, pepper, sugar, mushroom. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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